Anita Ekberg, star of La Dolce Vita, dies aged 83 | The Independent Anita Ekberg, star of La Dolce Vita, dies aged 83 A former Miss Sweden, she also appeared in films such as Blood Alley and War and Peace Sunday 11 January 2015 11:25 BST Click to follow Anita Ekberg, star of La Dolce Vita, dies aged 83 Keystone/Getty Images La Dolce Vita star Anita Ekberg has died aged 83. The Swedish-born actress received acclaim for her performance as Sylvia in Federico Fellini’s iconic film as the unattainable "dream woman" and was branded a "sex goddess". Italian media reported her death on 11 January, which was soon confirmed by her lawyer to agencies. Her lawyer Patrizia Ubaldi said Ekberg had been hospitalized most recently after Christmas following a series of illnesses. Anita Ekberg dancing to guitarist in a scene from the film 'La Dolce Vita', 1960/Anita Ekberg, star of La Dolce Vita, dies aged 83 A former Miss Sweden, she also appeared in films such as Blood Alley and War and Peace.

La Dolce Vita revolved around a series of stories following a week in the life of a philandering paparazzo journalist living in Rome. Ekberg was immortalized after she was filmed bathing in the Trevi fountain in La Dolce Vita. Anita Ekberg in the iconic La Dolce Vita scene She had long lived in Italy, the country that gave her worldwide fame. She was married twice, first to Anthony Steel in 1956. They divorced three years later and she married Rik Van Nutter in 1963 until 1975.

The Years of La Dolce Vita The Years of La Dolce Vita 1/3 Brigitte Bardot Marcello Geppetti (1933-1998), 'Brigitte Bardot in Spoleto', June 1961 MGMC & Solares Fondazione delle Arti 2/3 Jane Mansfield Anita Ekberg Dead at 83 | Hollywood Reporter COMMENTS Yul Brynner The Fellini film's iconic scene in Rome's Trevi Fountain made the actress and former Miss Sweden a global sex symbol Anita Ekberg, who parlayed a Miss Sweden title into an acting career which peaked with her performance as Sylvia, an unattainable dream woman, in Federico Fellini 's La Dolce Vita, has died. She was 83 and died in a hospital outside of Rome. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Italian newspaper reports. A scene from the movie in which Ekberg danced uninhibitedly in the Fountain of Trevi is one of the cinema's most sensual sequences.

Read more Throwback Thursday: In 1956, Miss Sweden Anita Ekberg Dazzled at the Golden Globes One of the screen's 1950s sex symbols, Ekberg was briefly under contract with John Wayne 's Tatjac Prods. She won a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer for her performance as, of all things, a Chinese woman, Wei Ling, in Blood Alley (1955), which starred Wayne and Lauren Bacall. The buxom Swedish actress, who capitalized on her sexuality, played in such U.S. films as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and Zarak during the '50s. She appeared on several Bob Hope TV specials, where her special endowments were the butt of Hope's wisecracks. She also toured with Hope on his numerous USO tours, winning the appreciation of U.S. servicemen. Ekberg also appeared in two film comedies with Hope: Paris Holiday (1958) and Call Me Bwana (1962).

Ekberg was also on the 1955 ABC series Casablanca, playing the role of Ilsa, which Ingrid Bergman immortalized in the movie. In the United States during the '60s, Ekberg played a number of roles that capitalized on her blonde bombshell persona, which was carefully cultivated by staged press antics and gossip columnists recounting her romantic escapades with many famous men. Although Ekberg was mainly cast in roles that required only her statuesque beauty, she was most auspiciously cast as the female lead in RKO's Back From Eternity, where she starred opposite Robert Ryan and Rod Steiger. She delivered another solid performance as Helene in King Vidor's War and Peace in 1956, which was filmed in Rome. Read more Paramount Sues For Ownership of Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita' (Exclusive) Fellini also utilized her sexual persona in a segment of Bocaccio '70 (1962). In 1972, she played in Fellini's I Clowns. In 1987, she performed along with Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini's mockumentary career reflection Intervista.

For Italian director Vittorio de Sica, she starred along with Shirley MacLaine in Woman Times Seven (1967). Her films also included such romps as Four for Texas, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Ursula Andress. She also starred in such Hollywood fare as The Alphabet Murders, Way … Way Out and If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. Most recently, Ekberg played an aging opera star in Le Nain Rouge (The Red Dwarf). Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was born in Malmo, Sweden on Sept. 29, 1931. One of eight children, she won the Miss Malmo Pageant and subsequently was crowned Miss Sweden in 1950. As one of the top six finishers in the Miss Universe Pageant, she was offered a movie contract with Howard Hughes' RKO. However, she signed instead with Universal-International, playing window-dressing parts, beginning in 1953 with The Mississippi Gambler, Take Me to Town and The Golden Blade.

La Dolce Vita star Anita Ekberg dies - BBC News BBC News La Dolce Vita star Anita Ekberg dies 11 January 2015 Image caption Her role in La Dolce Vita is one of cinema's most iconic moments Anita Ekberg, star of La Dolce Vita, has died aged 83. A former Miss Sweden, she was branded a "sex goddess" for her performance in Federico Fellini's 1960 movie. The moment where she wades through Rome's Trevi Fountain in a strapless dress is considered one of cinema's most iconic scenes. Ekberg died in Rome on Sunday morning, her lawyer confirmed. She had been in hospital since Christmas following a series of illnesses. The actress had been in a wheelchair for several years after being knocked down by one of her pet Great Danes, breaking a hip. Born in Malmo, Sweden, in 1931, Ekberg was the sixth of eight children. She said her father, a harbour master and a strict Protestant, was "the apple of my eye", although she later fell out with all but one of her siblings.

After winning the Miss Sweden title at the age of 20, she travelled to America where she took part in the Miss Universe contest. Although she didn't win and spoke very little English, she was immediately signed to a contract by Universal Pictures. The studio sent her to work in Italy, where she played Henry Fonda's unfaithful wife in King Vidor's War and Peace (1956). Image copyright AP Image caption Ekberg became known as "Ekberg Iceberg" in a nod to her Scandinavian background Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The actress was linked to several Hollywood stars in the 1950s and 60s It was in Rome that she met director Federico Fellini, who cast her in La Dolce Vita as Sylvia Rank - "the most wonderful woman created since the beginning of time" - an actress pursued by news photographers. The famous scene in the Trevi Fountain saw Ekberg and her co-star Marcello Mastroianni wading through the chilled waters in sensual abandon. The sight of the water caressing her impossibly voluptuous body was shocking for audiences in the 1950s.

Media captionAnita Ekberg's most famous role was in La Dolce Vita The Vatican condemned it, but the famously sharp-tongued actress was unrepentant. "I'm very proud of my breasts, as every woman should be," she once said. "It's not cellular obesity, it's womanliness." Anatomy of a scene Image copyright AFP / Getty The fountain scene was shot on a chilly March morning in central Rome. "I was freezing,'' said Ekberg. "They had to lift me out of the water because I couldn't feel my legs anymore." Her co-star, Marcello Mastroianni, found the scene even more difficult, despite the luxury of a wetsuit under his clothes. He needed his acting resolve stiffened by an entire bottle of vodka, Fellini claimed. More than once, he fell over drunk in the freezing water. "I have seen that scene a few times. Maybe too many times," Ekberg told Swedish radio in 2005. "I can't stand watching it anymore, but it was beautiful at the time." Considering that La Dolce Vita gave rise to the term paparazzo, it was ironic that the movie resulted in Ekberg being hounded by the press herself.

She was constantly in the headlines for her romances with Hollywood's leading men, and her lovers were said to include Errol Flynn, Yul Brynner and Frank Sinatra. But she also made the front pages when, in 1960, she turned on photographer Felice Quinto with a bow and arrow. Quinto was amongst a pack of reporters who followed her from a nightclub to her villa in Rome. During the fracas, she was photographed with her knee in one man's groin. The actress was "furious", Quinto later reported. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The actress's star waned in later years At 24, Ekberg married British actor Anthony Steel in Florence, Italy. I don't know if paradise or hell exist but I'm sure hell is more groovy Anita Ekberg The police were called in to control the crowds who were trying to get a glimpse of the couple, but the marriage was doomed by Steel's heavy drinking. "Right from the start he'd go out somewhere and not come home till the next morning," Ekberg told Sydney's Daily Telegraph in 2000. "On the third night I came home to find him swinging from the lights like an ape, smashed out of his mind.

"Because he was jealous he was always picking fights with any man who approached me and the last time we met he borrowed $100,000 from me which he never paid back." The couple divorced in 1959. Four years later, Ekberg married Rik Van Nutter, who played CIA agent Felix Leiter in the Bond film Thunderball. That union also ended in divorce in 1975. Waning popularity Alongside La Dolce Vita, Ekberg also appeared as a foil in Bob Hope's comedies Paris Holiday (1957) and Call Me Bwana (1963). Her other roles included Blood Alley (1955) and Hollywood or Bust (1956). Fellini cast her again in his section of the portmanteau comedy Boccaccio '70 (1962), where she played a 20ft version of herself with plunging cleavage, stepping down from an advertising hoarding to stalk a prudish doctor. But the actress's popularity was not enduring.

By the late 1970s, Ekberg had virtually disappeared from the screen, making only rare appearances in forgettable European films, although she appeared as herself in Fellini's 1987 cinematic memorybook Intervista. Image copyright AFP Image caption Ekberg at a screening of La Dolce Vita at the Rome Film Festival in 2010 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The movie had been restored by Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation, and the two met at the premiere According to several reports, the actress was almost penniless at the time of her death. She had been robbed of jewellery and furniture and her villa was badly damaged in a fire, forcing her to move, temporarily, into a care home. However, she continued to work, and opened a Fellini exhibition in Amsterdam in July 2013. Her lawyer Patrizia Ubaldi said that, in her last days. Ekberg was saddened by her illnesses and her advancing age. "She had hoped to get better, something that didn't happen," she said. But in an earlier interview, Ekberg had said she was not afraid of death.

"I don't know if paradise or hell exist," she told Sweden's Aftonbladet, "but I'm sure hell is more groovy." La Dolce Vita Movie Review & Film Summary (1960) | Roger Ebert Tweet I have heard theories that Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" catalogs the seven deadly sins, takes place on the seven hills of Rome, and involves seven nights and seven dawns, but I have never looked into them, because that would reduce the movie to a crossword puzzle. I prefer it as an allegory, a cautionary tale of a man without a center. Advertisement Fellini shot the movie in 1959 on the Via Veneto, the Roman street of nightclubs, sidewalk cafes and the parade of the night. His hero is a gossip columnist, Marcello, who chronicles "the sweet life" of fading aristocrats, second-rate movie stars, aging playboys and women of commerce. The role was played by Marcello Mastroianni , and now that his life has ended we can see that it was his most representative.

The two Marcellos -- character and actor -- flowed together into a handsome, weary, desperate man, who dreams of someday doing something good, but is trapped in a life of empty nights and lonely dawns. The movie leaps from one visual extravaganza to another, following Marcello as he chases down stories and women. He has a suicidal fiancee ( Magali Noel ) at home. In a nightclub, he picks up a promiscuous society beauty ( Anouk Aimee ), and together they visit the basement lair of a prostitute. The episode ends not in decadence but in sleep; we can never be sure that Marcello has had sex with anyone. Another dawn. And we begin to understand the film's structure: A series of nights and dawns, descents and ascents. Marcello goes down into subterranean nightclubs, hospital parking lots, the hooker's hovel and an ancient crypt. And he ascends St. Peter's dome, climbs to a choir loft, and to the high-rise apartment of Steiner ( Alain Cuny ), the intellectual who is his hero. He will even fly over Rome.

Advertisement The famous opening scene, as a statue of Christ is carried above Rome by a helicopter, is matched with the close, in which fisherman on the beach find a sea monster in their nets. Two Christ symbols: the statue "beautiful" but false, the fish "ugly" but real. During both scenes there are failures of communication. The helicopter circles as Marcello tries to get the phone numbers of three sunbathing beauties. At the end, across a beach, he sees the shy girl he met one day when he went to the country in search of peace to write his novel. She makes typing motions to remind him, but he does not remember, shrugs, and turns away. If the opening and closing scenes are symmetrical, so are many others, matching the sacred and profane and casting doubts on both. An early sequence finds Marcello covering the arrival in Rome of an improbably buxom movie star ( Anita Ekberg ), and consumed with desire. He follows her to the top of St. Peters, into the bowels of a nightclub, and into the Roman night, where wild dogs howl and she howls back.

His pursuit ends at dawn when she wades into the Trevi Fountain and he wades after her, idealizing her into all women, into The Woman; she remains forever just out of reach. This sequence can be paired with a later one where children report a vision of the Virgin. Marcello races to the site, which is surrounded by TV cameras and a crowd of the devout. Again, we have an idealized woman and the hope that she can solve every problem. But the children lead the faithful on a chase, just as the Ekberg led Marcello around Rome. They see the Virgin here, and then there, as the lame and the blind hobble after them and their grandfather cadges for tips. Once again everything collapses in an exhausted dawn. Advertisement The central episodes in "La Dolce Vita" involve Steiner, who represents all that Marcello envies. Steiner lives in an apartment filled with art. He presides over a salon of poets, folk singers, intellectuals. He has a beautiful wife and two perfect children. When Marcello sees him entering a church, they ascend to the organ loft and Steiner plays Bach while urging Marcello to have more faith in himself, and finish that book.

Then follows the night of Steiner's party, and the moment (more or less the exact center of the film) where Marcello takes his typewriter to a country trattoria and tries to write. Then comes the terrible second Steiner scene, when Marcello discovers that Steiner's serenity was made from a tissue of lies. To mention these scenes is to be reminded of how many other great moments this rich film contains. The echo chamber. The Mass at dawn. The final desperate orgy. And of course the touching sequence with Marcello's father ( Annibale Ninchi ), a traveling salesman who joins Marcello on a tour of the night. In a club they see a sad-faced clown (Poidor) lead a lonely balloon out of the room with his trumpet. And Marcello's father, filled with the courage of champagne, grows bold with a young woman who owes Marcello a favor -- only to fall ill and leave, gray and ashen, again at dawn. The movie is made with boundless energy. Fellini stood here at the dividing point between the neorealism of his earlier films (like " La Strada ") and the carnival visuals of his extravagant later ones (" Juliet of the Spirits ," " Amarcord ").

His autobiographical " 8 1/2 ," made three years after "La Dolce Vita," is a companion-piece, but more knowing: There the hero is already a filmmaker, but here he is a young newspaperman on the make. Advertisement The music by Nino Rota is of a perfect piece with the material. It is sometimes quasi-liturgical, sometimes jazz, sometimes rock; lurking beneath is the irreverence of tuba and accordions, and snatches of pop songs ("Stormy Weather" and even "Jingle Bells"). The characters are forever in motion, and Rota gives them music for their processions and parades. The casting is all typecasting. Anita Ekberg might not have been much of an actress, but she was the only person who could play herself. Lex Barker , a onetime movie Tarzan, was droll as her alcoholic boyfriend. Alain Cuny's severe self-confidence as Steiner is convincing, which is why his end is a shock.

And remember Anouk Aimee, her dark glasses concealing a black eye; the practical, commonsensical Adriana Moneta as the streetwalker; Alan Dijon as the satanic ringleader at the nightclub; and always Mastroianni, his eyes squinting against a headache or a deeper ache of the soul. He was always a passive actor, and here that quality is needed: Seeking happiness but unable to take the steps to find it, he spends his nights in endless aimless searching, trying to please everyone, the juggler with more balls than skills. Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I saw "La Dolce Vita" in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom "the sweet life" represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello's world; Chicago's North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 a.m. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello's age.

Advertisement When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was 10 years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal. There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.

Popular Blog Posts 'Dolce Vita' actress Anita Ekberg dies aged 83 'Dolce Vita' actress Anita Ekberg dies aged 83 Share View photos Anita Ekberg in 2010 in Stockholm to commemorate 50 years since her famous swim in the Trevi fountain for Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (AFP Photo/Jonas Ekstromer) More Rome (AFP) - Swedish actress Anita Ekberg, known for one of cinema's most sensual performances in Federico Fellini's 1960 film "La Dolce Vita", has died in Italy at the age of 83. The voluptuous actress, immortalised by her performance as the dream woman who tempts Marcello Mastroianni in the Fellini classic, died on Sunday in hospital outside the Italian capital, according to reports. Ekberg, who was born and brought up in Sweden, had reportedly been in a wheelchair for several years after being knocked over by one of her pet Great Danes and breaking her hip.

She spent most of her adult life abroad, first in the United States, where she quickly emerged as one of a 1950s generation of pin-ups and starlets, and then in Italy. The sixth of eight children, Ekberg was born in 1931 in the Swedish port of Malmo where her father was a docker. She first attracted attention as a teenager, winning a beauty contest to become "Miss Sweden" in 1950. Both her mother and her friends had encouraged her to enter beauty contests, and her success quickly took her to the United States, with hopes of becoming Miss Universe. Although she did not win, she was noticed by, among others, the cult film director Russ Meyer, the eccentric millionaire businessman and producer Howard Hughes and the actor-producer John Wayne. In addition to becoming a pin-up for magazines such as "Confidential" and "Playboy", she appeared in a series of comedy films including "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" (1953), "Artists and Models" (1955) and "Hollywood or Bust" (1956). In each case Ekberg's spectacular physique was made part of the plot, often to comic effect.

When in 1954 she visited a US base in Greenland with the actor William Holden and the comedian Bob Hope, the latter quipped that her parents had been given the Nobel Prize for architecture. It was for the director King Vidor that Ekberg first arrived in Italy, to act in his 1956 film of "War and Peace" along with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda. She was then noticed by Fellini, known for having an eye for beautiful women. In the famous scene in "La Dolce Vita", she cavorted in Rome's Trevi Fountain, exhibiting her curvaceous charms to an urbane Mastroianni. The film won Fellini the Golden Palm award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival of the same year, and the fountain scene rapidly became one of the most famous images in cinema history.

Ekberg was to star in several other major Italian films, including "Boccacio 70," (1962), co-directed by Fellini and Vittorio De Sica and also starring Sophia Loren, plus Fellini's circus film "I Clowns" (1970) and his "Intervista" (1987), also featuring Mastroianni. In 2011 the Turin daily La Stampa reported that at the age of 80 the former star asked for financial help from the Fellini Foundation. She lived in a residence for elderly people near to Rome after breaking her hip. Her many romantic liaisons reportedly included spells with Gianni Agnelli, head of the Fiat auto company, as well as with Mastroianni, Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra. Ekberg was married twice, firstly to the British actor Anthony Steel between 1956 and 1959 and then to the American actor Rik Van Nutter between 1963 and 1975. Both marriages ended in divorce and there were no children.

Reblog 'La Dolce Vita' actress dies in Italy - CNN.com Swedish-born actress Anita Ekberg died Sunday in Italy, her adopted home She often said that "La Dolce Vita" director Federico Fellini owed his success to her (CNN) Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-born actress whose role in "La Dolce Vita" made her into an international symbol of sensuality, died in Italy on Sunday. Her death was widely reported in Italian media, citing complications from a longtime illness. She was 83. Ekberg died in the country that made her an international star thanks to her turn as Sylvia, Marcello Mastroianni's unattainable dream woman the 1960 Federico Fellini classic. However, she was often quoted as saying that Fellini owed his fame to her , not the other way around.

Anita Ekberg was immortalized in the fountain scene from 'La Dolce Vita.' A scene from "La Dolce Vita" of her bathing in Rome's Trevi fountain, clad in a black gown with a plunging neckline, cemented her sex symbol status, a designation she would later refer to as a "handicap." American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan also immortalized Ekberg in the song "I Shall Be Free." Read More Born in Malmo, Sweden, in 1931, Ekberg's road to stardom began in 1950, when she represented Sweden in the Miss Universe competition, according to internet movie database IMDb . She did not win, but she landed a modeling contract in the United States, where she posed for Playboy and American pinup magazines. She landed Hollywood roles over the next decade that played on her beauty and her voluptuous figure. She appeared in the comedy "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" as a guard on the planet Venus.

She also appeared in two comedies with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, "Artists and Models" and "Hollywood or Bust," and another with Bob Hope, "Paris Holiday." She made Italy her home after her breakthrough role, where she continued to pursue a career in TV and film, though she drew more attention for her personal life, which included two marriages. She was absent from the public eye in recent years. According to Italian media, she had grown destitute over the years, with little financial recourse when she became began suffering the setbacks of old age. La dolce vita Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest United States The Movie Itself: Our Reviewer's Take By 1960, Federico Fellini had already directed or co-directed (by his own counting) six and a half feature films, had been nominated for screenwriting Oscars four times, and had firmly established a reputation as one of the most important voices in Italian cinema. For all that, his new film that year, 'La dolce vita', can now clearly be recognized as a transitional work bridging the two halves of his career. It may also be the most important movie he ever made, and is one of several that can rightly be described as masterpieces.

Like many of his contemporaries during and after the Second World War, Fellini started as part of the Neo-Realist movement. Among other works, he wrote the classics 'Rome, Open City' and 'Paisan' for his mentor Roberto Rossellini. By the time he began directing his own movies, however, Fellini slowly lost interest in the strict dogmas of the genre or in merely emulating a sense of social realism. He allowed obvious artifice to intrude into efforts like 'La strada' and 'Nights of Cabiria', bits of whimsy and wonder that many of his peers did not care for but that critics and audiences around the world found captivating. 'La dolce vita' ("The Sweet Life") was the last movie Fellini made before segueing fully into his Surrealist phase with the autobiographical fantasy ' 8 ½ '. Once he made that leap, the director never looked back. For the remainder of his life, he'd be known as the most famous Surrealist in cinema history, and his films would grow into outrageous phantasmagoric spectacles. The term "Felliniesque" would practically become a genre unto itself. But that was all still to come.

In the meantime, 'La dolce vita' pushes right up against the line between realism and Surrealism but never completely crosses it. The film follows the exploits of an entertainment journalist named Marcello (the great Marcello Mastroianni) as he drifts through the social scene in Rome, keeping company with socialites and celebrities, making an excuse of half-heartedly interviewing them when he feels like it. (The term "paparazzo" actually originates right here in this film.) Marcello is a smooth operator and an only somewhat repentant womanizer. He repeatedly cheats on his high-strung and desperately jealous fiancée, even after driving her to the brink of suicide. His string of affairs includes a wealthy but ennui-ridden heiress (the lovely Anouk Aimée) and a buxom, vivacious foreign actress (Anita Ekberg). For the time he's with each woman, Marcello professes himself to be rapturously in love with her, and may even convince himself of it, but he's incapable of actually feeling that emotion. He's callous and detached from everything. He feels like he's wasting his life, and has no real friends.

Journalist colleagues stand to the side and take photos as he's beaten up. When a man he considered a close friend commits murder-suicide, Marcello realizes that he never really knew him on anything but the most superficial level, which is the case with all of his relationships. The film has little plot of consequence. The narrative moves episodically as Marcello flits from party to party, chronicling a society in decay and the malaise of the privileged as petty concerns are magnified and genuine tragedies are heartlessly exploited. Nevertheless, the picture vividly captures a place and a moment with numerous images and set-pieces of rapturous beauty. Despite his unlikable, even reprehensible behavior, Marcello remains a sympathetic guide into this world. His quest to find meaning in his life, whether he achieves it or not, is ultimately his redemption. Upon its release, 'La dolce vita' was a sensational success around the world and has been hugely influential on countless subsequent films and filmmakers. Frequently cited as one of the greatest movies ever made, its three-hour length effortlessly breezes by. That any filmmaker could create even a single work this resonant and profound in a lifetime is an amazing achievement.

For Federico Fellini, however, this was merely the cusp of an even more ambitious and defining stage in his life. 'La dolce vita' enters the Criterion Collection as spine #733 on both Blu-ray and DVD, with separate releases for each format. The Blu-ray is a single-disc edition that comes packaged in one of the label's clear keepcases. For some reason, rather than a traditional booklet, the disc comes with an essay printed on a fold-out pamphlet. Annoyingly, upon playback, the movie opens with over a minute and a half of on-screen text about the new video restoration, which I suppose someone expects viewers to read every single time they watch the movie. Unfortunately, the disc does not even have a convenient chapter marker to skip past this intrusion and get to the beginning of the movie. You must either watch it or fast-forward. The Video: Sizing Up the Picture I've seen 'La dolce vita' twice in 35mm theatrical screenings, both times from prints in excellent condition. The nature of the film's sublime style and visuals convinced me that I never wanted to watch it in any presentation that would be inferior to those experiences.

As a result, many years have passed since I last saw the movie. I skipped over Laserdisc and DVD releases that were reported to be problematic, and held out for a Blu-ray, preferably from the Criterion Collection. And now here that is! I normally feel that I can trust Criterion to do a good job with important classic movies like this. However, the technical information for this disc states that it's derived from a new 4k restoration performed by external parties, not by Criterion. In this case, the restoration was done by Cineteca di Bologna, The Film Foundation, and Pathé. That last part gave me pause, as Pathé very badly botched a so-called "restoration" of Marcel Carné's ' Children of Paradise ' that Criterion got stuck distributing (and taking blame for). With that in mind, I couldn't help feeling some trepidation as I spun up this copy of one of my very favorite films. Fortunately, once I got past the irritating text introduction, it didn't take long into the movie's opening before all my qualms melted away. This is an absolutely gorgeous Blu-ray, one of the very finest black-and-white video transfers I've ever watched.

The 2.35:1 image has a luminous, silky smooth quality with excellent gray scale, contrast, and a natural but unobtrusive presence of film grain. The film elements have been cleansed of almost all dirt or age-related damage. Although the movie was photographed slightly on the soft side, the 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 encode has no noticeable problems with Digital Noise Reduction and exhibits a fine sense of detail, enough to plainly spot the wire pulling Anita Ekberg's hat off around the 35-minute mark. Somehow, this exquisite restoration has surpassed even my demanding expectations for it. The Audio: Rating the Sound The Blu-ray provides the movie's original Italian-language soundtrack in uncompressed PCM mono format, with no alternate language dub options. When I say original language, keep in mind that Fellini shot all of his films with no live sound recording. All dialogue was dubbed in post-production. In fact, the director had a habit of not even writing some of the dialogue until after photography was completed. Actors on set might have spoken completely different words, perhaps even in completely different languages, than the final script. Accurate dialogue lip sync was simply not something that concerned the filmmaker.

This was a common convention of Italian cinema of the era, and contemporary American viewers will need to accept and get used to it, because dialogue sync in the soundtrack isn't even remotely close to the visuals on screen. It's very noticeable if you're at all inclined to pay attention to such things. However, if you don't happen to speak Italian, you should be able to tune out the problem relatively easily. In other respects, the Blu-ray's soundtrack is very respectable considering the source limitations, but definitely sounds its age. The track has a rather flat range. A little hiss is often audible during quiet passages. Nino Rota's score is sometimes shrill. On the other hand, an organ sound during one scene is nicely reverberant. Overall, it's fine for what it is. The Blu-ray boasts a new English subtitle translation. All subtitles are in white text within the 2.35:1 movie image, but are always legible. Because I don't speak Italian, I can't vouch for the accuracy of the translation, but I noticed some confusion about whether Anita Ekberg's character is supposed to be a Swedish or American actress.

The Supplements: Digging Into the Good Stuff Both Criterion's Blu-ray and separate DVD edition contain the same assortment of bonus features. The Eye & the Beholder (HD, 10 min.) – I have mixed feelings about this so-called visual essay (on YouTube, you'd call it a "supercut") from a critic/filmmaker (I'm not entirely sure that either description is quite accurate) who goes by the handle :: kogonada. The piece manipulates footage from 'La dolce vita' and other films to analyze the final shot and Fellini's complicated use of point-of-view. On the one hand, :: kogonada has some interesting and worthwhile (albeit brief) insight into this very specific facet of the movie. On the other hand, the trance music soundtrack and cheesy robotic narrator voice are as annoying and pretentious as the creator's chosen name. Federico Fellini Interview (SD, 30 min.) – This vintage interview was conducted by NBC correspondent Irving R. Levine for a program called 'The Open Mind' in 1965, as Fellini was promoting 'Juliet of the Spirits'.

Asked a series of prepared questions in English, the filmmaker responds in subtitled Italian and rambles (charmingly but often evasively) at length about his career, what his films mean, his influences and favorite movies or directors, and the Italian film industry. The program is very awkwardly edited, with one section that was obviously reshot after the footage around it, and has bad sound. The most interesting part comes at the end when Fellini describes his rather eccentric writing process. Lina Wertmüller Interview (HD, 8 min.) – Later an acclaimed filmmaker in her own right, Wertmüller started her career as an assistant director for Fellini on '8 ½'. In this new interview, she describes him as "a friend and a playmate," talks about his fascination with female asses, and discusses his relationships with Marcello Mastrioanni, Anita Ekberg and wife Guiletta Masina. David Forgacs Interview (HD, 14 min.) – The film scholar and professor discusses how 'La dolce vita' reflects the Rome of its day, and how the film itself changed the city.

He also breaks down the ways that Fellini's complex use of composition and narrative structure conveys the themes and messages of the film. At about four minutes longer than the :: kogonada piece, Forgacs delivers around twenty times the analysis and insight with none of the pretentious affectation. Antonello Sarno Interview (HD, 16 min.) – Italian film journalist Sarno speaks so quickly on such a breadth of topics that the subtitles have trouble keeping up. Among other things, he talks about Fellini's use of style and fashion in the film, its commentary on commercialism, and a deleted scene that has been lost. The whole time, however, I found myself distracted trying to read the titles in his DVD collection on the shelf behind him. (I don't recognize many.) Marcello Mastroianni Interview (HD, 47 min.) – In a 1963 audio interview played over photos, the actor covers his career, his relationship with Fellini, and how 'La dolce vita' changed his life. Felliniana – A still gallery of poster art (some quite crazy), theater programs, publicity materials and other ephemera from a collector of Fellini memorabilia.

Pamphlet Essay – Music and film writer Gary Giddins provides an essay about Fellini and 'La dolce vita'. HD Bonus Content: Any Exclusive Goodies in There? The disc has no Blu-ray exclusive features. Final Thoughts Fellini's 'La dolce vita' is one of my favorite films of all time, and has been among the top "holy grails" I've awaited on Blu-ray since the format started. More than that, I really needed a perfect presentation for the movie. As high as my expectations were, I think Criterion has met them. This Blu-ray has a flawless video transfer and some mostly interesting bonus features. For any film lover who isn't afraid of classic or foreign cinema (in black-and-white, no less!), this disc comes very highly recommended. Technical Specs Fellini's La Dolce Vita Fcourt Lawrence Russell La Dolce Vita, 1960 dir. Frederico Fellini writ. Fellini, Flaiano, Pinelli cine.

Otello Martelli music Nino Rota Star Marcello Mastrianni (Marcello), Anouk Aimee (Maddalena), Walter Santesso (Paparazzo), Yvonne Furneaux (Emma), Anita Ekberg (Sylvia), Lex Barker (Robert), Alain Cuny (Steiner), Annibale Ninchi (Marcello's father), Nadia Gray (Stripper), Valerie Ciangotti (Paola, the innocent) There aren't many opening sequences that match this one: a helicopter flies over a broken Roman viaduct, a statue of Christ suspended below its fuselage like an effigy from a cargo cult. A second helicopter shadows it, bearing a journalist and his photographer. Their journey is not only a mission for the Vatican but also a progression through Time. They fly over ancient ruins, then over construction sites and the new cluster housing units on the edge of the city before closing on St. Peter's Square. The journalists linger briefly above a rooftop patio where some pretty women are sunbathing, engage in a brief flirtation with shouts and sign language as the chopper hovers. The women want to know where they are taking the statue.

Where else -- to the Pope. It's this atmosphere of religious cynicism and cultivated decadence that drives La Dolce Vita. The heresy isn't a political articulation but rather one of indifference. At the core of the movie is the suicide of Steiner, musician and intellectual, which marks the collapse of contemporary culture like an abyss between the secular left and the religious right. And it's along this abyss that Marcello, gossip columnist of the rich and famous, charts his rite of passage in a determined attempt to remain a child disguised as a man. Marcello lives for sensation, evades commitment. He's always on the move in his chic little English sports car between trendy Roman sidewalk bistros and nightclubs, seldom at his apartment which remains undecorated and unfurnished in an obvious expression of his spiritual indifference. When he writes, he writes in empty cafes. When he loves, he loves in the flooded basement suite of a prostitute or in the darkness of a ruined villa. His women are transitional, secular icons of the affluent world he covers, fantasies of the moment, patterns in the night. "I like lots of things, but there are three things I like most: love, love...

and love." (Sylvia the movie star at her press conference) His live-in girlfriend Emma overdoses on sleeping pills but is saved when he races her to hospital, has her stomach pumped. But he might as well not have bothered, as he continues to neglect her in his continuous drift through the socials and press assignments that become parties, ambiguous destinations in a false reality. He pursues the visiting American/Scandinavian filmstar Sylvia (Ekberg) into a bell tower, into a fountain, but their brief affair comes to nothing. He visits the scene of a Madonna vision, endures the reenactment for the media and a rain storm, but no miracle is forthcoming. He talks with Steiner about the meaning of life but Steiner kills his two children, shoots himself in the head. His pursuit of sensation is degenerative, climaxes at a drunken party in the seaside villa of a movie producer -- another agent of fantasy. The revellers are a collection of thespian drifters, queens, artists, international party animals drawn together on the thin excuse of celebrating Nadia's "annulment". The metaphor of separation continues.

Marcello -- wearing a white suit like some sort of secular priest -- is the ringmaster of the dissipation, urging the guests into exhibitionism. Nadia performs a striptease, but even this isn't enough. Marcello offers to perform public sex but the best he can do is ride a woman like donkey. He throws bottles, smashes furniture, rags pillows, throws chunks of chicken over the naked shoulders and breasts of a woman. "Maybe one day we'll all be homosexual..." The scene is pathetic, like the infantile defiance of adolescents smearing excrement over tombstones. The producer returns home, expels this rabble from his villa, some migrating through the woods to the beach where some fishermen have caught a "sea monster". Marcello and the others watch as it's hauled onto the beach, a membranous blob with a single eye that seems to be alive, maybe scrutinizing them. Are they looking at themselves in the prehistoric past? The image is Darwinian, secular, a dramatic denial of the false miracle of the Madonna. "Maybe one day we'll all be homosexual," babbles one of the Queens in an unrelated observation.

But, in fact, it is related, as Fellini is the master of oblique innuendo. Someone is calling Marcello. Further down the beach a girl is waving. He walks towards her but is stopped by a small river that separates them. It's Paola, the young "innocent" from the cafe where Marcello sometimes goes to write. They try to communicate but the surf is too loud, a primal noise that divides them as effectively as a child leaving the womb. Marcello smiles, waves, turns away... leaving it all behind. The "it" -- the indefinite article -- has the plastic possibilities of several meanings. As symbolism, this sequence is brilliant, resolving the two primary themes of religious disbelief and secular solipsism. Marcello is the Modern Man, unable to believe, unable to commit, a lost child in the body of a monster. "We live in a state of suspended animation... like a work of art." Steiner's suicide is pivotal. Is Man the only animal for whom suicide is an option? Is it a detachment from God? Or is it merely another part of the mechanism that binds us within the cosmic plan.

Steiner appears to have it all: a beautiful wife and two beautiful children, an upscale condo and the favor of the Church. His "party" includes an intellectual elite of international and local artists and thinkers. He has "committed", yet he is another version of Marcello. "I'm too serious to be an amateur, and not serious enough to be a professional." He urges Marcello to get serious about his writing, move beyond these "semi-fascist scandal sheets". The guests listen to a tape montage of Nature: birds, wind, water, rain, thunder. They also tape their conversations, creating instant "art". "Art," says Steiner, "has left nothing to chance." This avant-garde milieu appears to be the summit of mid-century culture... yet Steiner is a troubled man. He suffers from nuclear anxiety, the fragility of life in the Cold War. He is cosmopolitan, yet Italianate, a contradiction of principles. He dotes on his children, blesses them as they sleep like a parody of the Pope. That he later kills them so that they will be with him in his transcendental sleep is an act of religious arrogance as much as it is a gesture of secular despair.

He consigns his wife to Hell in order that he may be free. Later the investigating Detectives listen to his taped conversation, Dialogue Between Feminine Wisdom and Masculine Uncertainty as Steiner sits nearby, leaning forward as if in rapture, the bullet hole clearly evident in the side of his temple. Each side of the abyss has separate but inevitable routes to loneliness, despair and death. Marcello investigates the scene of the miracle sighting of the Virgin but when the stampeding crowd has finished, only the corpse of a trampled man remains in the mud. In the ruined villa adjoining the castle, a possessed woman at a seance moans, "I want to love... life, everything there is..." but minutes later his mistress Maddalena cheats on him after proposing marriage through a wall like a spirit. When he confronts his prehistoric self on the beach, can he be anything other than an apostate? Religion is the denial, art is the testament. Night. Marcello and Emma sit in his sports car, arguing: Emma: You'll end up alone, like an animal -- you'll see! Marcello: I hate your selfishness... it's not love, it's animalism!

She bites his hand as he drags her from the car, then drives off. He returns at dawn, finds her still pacing, a bunch of flowers in her hand. They reconcile... for the moment. Marcello's not a bad man, even if he lacks character. His flaw is rooted in the mid-century sickness, that is, the redefinition of the supernatural by science. He's a victim of paranoia, a species on the verge of self-extinction. He thinks he has free-will, yet moves like an automaton. Soon the world will be full of people like him, child-men driven by cynicism, always on the move or waiting for something to happen. The film opens with a statue of Christ, closes with an ingenue version of the Virgin. The heresy is sublime, coded in the imagery -- but who is to say it isn't the truth? Fellini is never monolithic, propaganda. Yet like Shakespeare, there's a sense that the genius of Fellini is not the genius of a single mind. While the Fellini "style" is clearly evident, you wonder how much of its intellectual fabric comes from his main writing collaborator, the novelist Ennio Flaiano . © LR '63/99

Question: Who was the female star of the Rome-set film, 'La Dolce Vita'?
Answer: ANITA EKBERG